A Warning to the Republican Establishment

Apr 10, 2012

RUSH: To the phones we go, Livonia, Michigan. This is Ken. Glad you waited, sir. Great to have you on the EIB Network. Hi.

CALLER: Yeah, thanks for taking my call, Rush.

RUSH: Yeah.

CALLER: I just wanted to comment that the suspension of the campaign by Rick Santorum is really a sad day for America. It’s a sad day for those of us that believe in America, believe in the Constitution, and want to get back to the way our country is supposed to be run. What concerns me, Rush… Now, when we look at our economy and how things fell apart, decisions made by Democrats and RINO Republicans — moderate Republicans — led to our country’s collapse. What is gonna happen now with Mitt Romney? I mean, here’s a man that clearly (just look at who has endorsed him) is not a conservative. This is not gonna be good for our country. I hope that Rick Santorum reconsiders, but if we end up having a non-conservative running for president, unfortunately this is not a good thing.

RUSH: Thank you, Ken, very much. This is what I was just talking about. I know a lot of you out there feel this way. I’m still getting e-mails. “You know, I really love you. I really like you. But you really make me mad with your constant harping at Romney.” I’ve tried to not “harp” here. I’m always challenged by the necessity of being honest and not being misleading about anything. But I’m under no illusions here that I’m a kingmaker or any of that. I’m just telling you: I know what the high hopes were coming out of the 2010 midterms and the Tea Party and everything.

The only thing I can tell you, Ken, is that Romney came by here in January. I think it was the 13th, the middle of the month. And I met with him after the show. It was about 4:30. I met with him for almost an hour, and he left here for a huge fundraiser a mile down the road, mile and a half. And during that conversation — I’ve mentioned this to you — he said to me that he wouldn’t be surprised if he ended up being a one-term president because he’s got to shake things up. This country can’t go the direction it’s going or his children and grandchildren and nobody else’s will have a future. When he was talking about that, he sounds just like you and me.

He sounds just like you and me when we talk about it. He was very affirmative in his acknowledgement to me of the threats posed by Obama and the Democrats to this country. If you had been in that conversation, you would not have doubted his conservatism at that moment. But then you would read where he has said in years past, “Look, I’m not a conservative. I’m not one of these,” and you’d scratch your head. I’m not saying it wiped any of those other instances out. I’m just telling you that that day, he sounded like me. He was fairly echoing the fears I have about what’s in store for this country if the Democrats are not stopped. This transformation, this belief that our founding was unjust and immoral and we’ve had a fraudulent country for 200-plus years.

That it’s a country that was structured by the rich, for the rich, at the expense of everybody else. And everybody was just left to fend for themselves. And the Founders knew that most people couldn’t fend for themselves, and that was the way that the Founders kept all the goodies for themselves and their family and others in their socioeconomic class. It was all part of the plan. (This is what Obama believes.) And that it’s finally taken 200-plus years, but the evidence of the failure of the founding of this country is now clear. And Obama is the right man at the right time to finally fix it. And he’s doing it by taking away everything he can from the rich that he can.

And ostensibly redistributing it and giving it to all the people that have been shafted and screwed since the founding of the country. And he’s gonna do that by growing government and making it the distribution center for all that’s fair and just economically and politically and socially. And Romney that day spoke and made it sound like he understood this, agreed with it, and also agreed that it has to stop. Then the other day… (sigh) What was it? I forget this. It’s on the tip of my tongue here. Somebody said something offensive and Obama condemned, and Romney in five minutes joined in condemning it, too. I said, “No, no. You don’t do that!” It was clearly pandering. I don’t remember what it was. It was just last week.

He condemned somebody that Obama condemned because they had done something or said something. I forget what it was now. I’m sure many of you are shouting at your radio now that you remember what it was. So, anyway, now, the establishment? There are no more excuses now. Well, there are. That’s why I guess I want to know what the excuses are gonna be if this doesn’t go the way they have it planned. If this doesn’t pan out to big-time electoral victory the way the establishment has it figured, then what will their excuse be? And I think I know. I think that if this campaign goes on and if it results in Obama winning, I think what the establishment is going to do is blame us. They’re gonna blame us conservatives for once again being too rigid and too demanding and too narrow and unrealistic and all this, and telling us that we’re the reason that Obama won.

“If we’d-a just got behind it,” and so forth… Which, of course, will be bogus.

It was Augusta National not admitting women. That’s what it was. Obama hyped on it and Romney joined in. Yeah.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I will just say this: If the Republican establishment is not careful, they are going to destroy themselves in the process of this campaign. If they screw this up… We’ve never had a better chance to win than this. If they screw this up, folks… I’ll develop this more tomorrow.